Abbas Amir-Entezam

Who is Abbas Amir-Entezam?

Abbas Amir-Entezam was the spokesman and deputy prime minister in the Interim Cabinet of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979. In 1981 he was sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of spying for the U.S., a charge critics suggest was a cover for retaliation against his early opposition to theocratic government in Iran. He is now "the longest-held political prisoner in the Islamic Republic of Iran". According to Fariba Amini, as of 2006 he has "been in jail for 17 years and in and out of jail for the last ten years, altogether for 27 years."